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As someone who raised chickens: they could care more about family ties.
Of course there will be differences between breeds and individuals but some things I witnessed:
- roosters, brothers by blood, fighting to the death
- chickens stealing eggs from each other
- chickens eating their own eggs (animals with good feed, grass and oister shells to peck on, fully available)
- younger chickens ganging up on the matriarch
- chickens killing their own chicks with no need to worry for lack of resources
Chickens are not gentle. In great enough numbers, chickens will even attack their predator. The birds can evaluate risk/success odds.
Again, there are more tame breeds and less tame ones. Some are the spawn of the deep pits where nightmares fester and grow.
Far to many people that have no experience with animals give them human thoughts and competency.
That's a mouth full.
Sometimes it seems we are too evolved for our own good but I like to think this tendency of ours will lead to a greater good.
That theory goes out the window when you have a city sliker meet a farm animal in person. One of my favorite childhood pass times was seeing city blokes cower in fear of petting a chicken or goat especially when that same person has pictures of chickens in their home because they are cute
That's just a whole lot of confirmation bias speaking. Most people are gonna hesitate when they encounter totally new things that's not unique to people from any type of place.
The goat I understand. Those fuckers are mean, and they bite. Who TF is afraid of a chicken? Turkey, sure. Again, they are mean and big enough to fight back. The chickens found out that they "can" become soccer balls if they piss off the ape that is bringing them food.
Who TF is afraid of a chicken?
Have you not met any chickens? They can be downright NASTY. And a lot of people don't have it in them to kick a chicken.
Yeah. A wise person checks their footing before kicking a chicken.
I lived on a farm as a kid and had to kick them out of the way to feed the little fuckers. They aren't scary, but yeah they are ill-tempered and nasty, if you don't out mass them by several times their mass. Kicking in this sense is more like shoving them with your foot, unless one of the fuckers bites, then they get a more forceful shove, that causes them to use their wings since they go a few inches off the ground.
Well yeah. I think scary is subjective on that sense. I have a big dog who used to be fear aggressive toward me and he didn't scare me (even though I knew he could kill me if he tried). It's about how comfortable we are in a situation, I suppose. My wife got attacked by coyotes once, so she's more cautious around them than any of our neighbors.
You'd be surprised by how many blokes are afraid of the adorable little balls of feathers that are always running away from them
I've got a mug from a town I used to live in. It's a rooster with the name "Shitty Larry" written across it. He was a local celeb. A rooster so badly behaved he had to be rehomed, and the people who adopted him created a whole lifestyle around dealing with his "antics".
As I was leaving, Fucking Frank was also coming into the spotlight.
They're assholes. But they taste good.
My grandmother raised chickens and there was rooster that used to harass my mother and her siblings and they hated the rooster. Apparently one day the rooster pecked at my grandmother's leg and then they had rooster stew for dinner. Point of the story is that roosters are assholes.
Coq au vin is worth it for the time and labour to prepare it.
I live in a largely portuguese area, but there are definitely "cousin" dishes to Coq au Vin, chicken and chourico (or linguica) stews with a dash of saffron or paprika, some good portuguese wine. Deliciuos.
Try this one if you can: frango na púcara
Minus the Parsley, I'd swear I have had similar.
Well that, and we never cook with Port around here, it's always dry wine or Madeira. Madeira is a much sweeter Port, which totally changes the flavor. I'll show this particular recipe to my wife and get her take.
I wonder, is this a mainland recipe maybe? Everyone around here is Azorean, which can slightly tweak the common ingredients. I watched a Bifana video last summer where the guy used CHEESE and it made everyone I know swear at him. You don't use Cheese in anything portuguese around here except Cheese Rolls.
Madeira is much more dry than Port wine. The soil of the island and the salty breeze are enough to change the nature of the wine at the grape level; plus, it's a fortified wine. Good Madeira should end on a slightly bitter, somewhat acidic note.
Port wine grows inland, on hills, where a river cuts across deep valeys. Any Port is sweet by nature, very round on the mouth, with wood and berry notes. The whites tend to be slightly more dry, with a somewhat citrus or flower note, but nonetheless sweet.
You can cook with these wines, especially if you want to flex a bit and add a few dimensions to the end result but plain wine os more than enough; Portugal was always essentially a poor country. Wine was prolific but fine wines like Port amd Madeira were luxury items and most of our traditional cuisine was born in farm kitchens, where food needed to be plentiful and tasteful, to help push away a hard day of labor.
Drowning meat in wine is almost standard fare. One especially traditional rabbit stew involves drowning the meat in red wine, over night, with garlic, onions and bay leaves, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and the next day cook it very slowly in a clay pot in the hoven. After a few hours, the meat should peel of the bone. Try it, if you can.
And cheese usually is not part of the main dish, unless you're serving francesinha or some preparation of hoven baked cod, where you may grate some island cheese on top for salt and the bitterness of it.
Bifana with cheese. That's criminal.
Madeira is much more dry than Port wine. The soil of the island and the salty breeze are enough to change the nature of the wine at the grape level; plus, it’s a fortified wine. Good Madeira should end on a slightly bitter, somewhat acidic note.
I've heard of dry Madeiera, but I've never tried it. Acidic, yes. Local Madeiras are very sweet around here. The most popular brand of Madeira in my area is effectively reduced grape juice mixed with Brandy. Sickeningly, coyingly sweet. My area perhaps the largest Portuguese Festival in the world (Feast of the Blessed Sacrament) is drink-sponsored by Justino's Madeira, and it's like drinking alcoholic maple syrup. It's freaking delicious, for all of 2 oz pour and then it gets hard to finish :) The local Madeira's have raisin or prune notes.
Now Port. We've got Sandalman and Pacheca. That can get fairly heavy, in either sweet or dry direction. I haven't had a bone dry port, but I'm told they exist. I always have a bottle of Port in the house. Not so much Madeira. Special occasions only (not the price, it's cheap. The extreme sweetness).
You can cook with these wines, especially if you want to flex a bit and add a few dimensions to the end result but plain wine os more than enough
I like the one-two punch of Sherry and Brandy much of the time. However, my wife and her family always uses a good Vinho Verde for her dishes. Cacoila is one of the local staples, and it's basically pork left to soak in wine forever with a few secret ingredients (usually at least some some paprika)
One especially traditional rabbit stew involves drowning the meat in red wine, over night, with garlic, onions and bay leaves, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and the next day cook it very slowly in a clay pot in the hoven
OMG... I had that once at one of the local places (Captain's place, since I've already doxed myself regarding the Festa). It was incredible. Rabbit isn't common here, so it was a special. I've never seen it since :(
And cheese usually is not part of the main dish, unless you’re serving francesinha or some preparation of hoven baked cod, where you may grate some island cheese on top for salt and the bitterness of it.
francesinha looks incredible. I've never seen it around here. I'm guessing it's a mainland dish? We have Sao Jorge cheese around here, but we only eat it straight. Also, nobody around here puts cheese with Cod, but baccalhau is often made with milk, so it's not a huge stretch to me.
Francesinha is a traditional dish from Porto. Mainland.
Regarding bacalhau, we only have about 1001 different recipes to prepare it. There are a lot of ingredients with which to cook it with.
Off the top of my head I can think of Bacalhau Espiritual and Bacalhau com Azeitonas, which are both baked.
Bacalhau Espiritual is prepared with scalded bacalhau, just enough to easily peel the fish and debone it, flaking it. Usually the water will have a clove or two of fresh garlic and a bay leaf. When the fish is out, take a few laddles of water into a bowl and throw some small peeled shrimps, of the frozen kind into it. Let it steep. On the side, prepare mashed potatoes; use one egg yolk per person, minus one, for more than two persons eating, for color and richness, and season it with nutmeg but don't fully season it with salt. You want a thick, creamy, mash. Cut two good sized onions in rings and lightly fry it in olive oil, until tender; add the shrimp and two or three table spoons of the water into the mix. Evaporate it. Throw two or three table spoons of white wine on it and evaporate it again. Add some finely chopped fresh parsley when you take it from the heat. In an oven safe glass or clay deep dish, pour a layer of mashed potatoes, smooth it, spread the cooked onions on top, with the shrimp, and cover with the flaked bacalhau. Pour a second layer of mashed potatoes on top. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grate some queijo da ilha on top. Take to the oven until the bread is golden brown and the cheese has melted.
The cheese will add the missing salt to the potato mash and bind the entire dish together with its sharpness.
Bacalhau com azeitonas uses potatoes cut into small cubes, parboiled, with the bacalhau prepared in the same fashion and no shrimp. The onions are slightly fried, until soft, along with some garlic, freshned up with some white wine at the end, allowed to boil a bit to take away the alcohol; you want liquid in the pan. Turn off the heat. Throw the potatoes in, mix well, add a good hand full of olives, combine. Cover the bottom of an oven safe dish with the flaked cod, cover with the potatoes. Sprinkle with a bit of finely grated cheese for extra salt and that sharpness. Take to the oven until the potatoes are fully cooked, golden, and the cheese melt. Sprinkle with fresh parsley before serving.
Not being a person of faith, I consider it borderline sinful to cook with vinho verde; too good for it. If you can, try and find some Alentejo, Douro or Dão. Three diferent regions, with very distinct wines. Just by playing around with the wine you use to cook you can get wildly diferent results.
Ever heard about chanfana? It's either old sheep or goat, left to marinate in red wine, onions, garlic, rosemary and bay leaves for days, then slowly cooked in the oven. It can take an entire day to properly cook it but the end result is a very tender meat. Goes well with potatoes. And some more wine.
The Port brands you mention are mostly export brands. Pacheca is quite pricey for our market, in fact. Like any other wine, Port is plentiful here, with a bottle starting at less than €5. And of good quality. Even supermarket brands are good. Port wine undergoes very strict production requirements to be classfied and labelled as such. Cheap, yes. Knockoff, no. I often buy a lesser known brand, Porto Intermares; its what I call an old style Port, unapolegetic, straight to the point, uncompromised. It will get you drunk and fast and warn you in advance but you just want to keep enjoying another little sip.
And you're giving me the chills with that description of the Madeira. Give it to me dry, please.
What people need to realize, especially those in peta, is that we cannot compare the suffering and mass killing animals to the same happening to humans. Speaking to someone who loves animals, they are a completely different life form that do not have human morals, values, intelligence, or emotion.
Which isn't to say that they don't have their own intelligence or emotion, it's just very different from what the human thought process is like.
Thus it would be absurd to put them on the same pedestal as homosapiens, evolutionarily speaking.
Life is not a Disney cartoon, that I understand that I will be down voted by vegans who don't understand this and will call me cruel.
That said I obviously support the Humane treatment of animals, but if you think I'm going to stop eating a creature that would eat me with far less hesitation if the roles were reversed, you are truly a fool.
We had chickens when I was a teen. They regularily hunted, killed and ate small rodents, lizards/snakes and sometimes even small birds like young sparrows whenever they could catch them - everything that fits into a chicken's beak is fair game. And it wasn't exactly a pretty sight. Imagine a single panicked field mouse being chased by sixteen feathered mini velociraptors, all trying to kill the mouse first, and then all fighting each other FOR the (hopefully) dead prey, as noone ever wanted to share their kill.
Funnily enough, the rooster was was a cuddly little idiot. (he got beaten up by the hens occasionally)
And just t add some proof for some of the points above, here's a video of a single hen killing a hawk (warning, it is kinda graphic). They don't even need great numbers to shred their wannabe predators - one really p*ssed off chicken and an opportunity to strike back, that's all it takes.
I didn't witness it but there are a few chicken farms around the area - the kind where chickens can freely roam around a huge shed - and I was told from an acquaintace that works at one they had been on the lookout for foxes, as they had already destroyed a few coops around the farm.
One morning they arrive at the barn to find a few dead chickens and two foxes partially skeletonized on the floor. It was a gruesome sight and the recording from the security cameras showed the foxes had been completely overrun by a mob of angry chickens that pecked, kicked and essentially killed by the thousand cuts method the poor wannabe predators.
The few chickens the foxes managed to kill were not enough to deter the mob but instead served to further spur it into a killer frenzy.
Because foxes are a protectes species, they had to call the authorities to give notice and have the cadavers picked up. Even the municipal vet was horrified at the state the chickens had left the foxes.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
here's a video of a single hen killing a hawk
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i've heard chickens will just casually peck others to death if they have a wound too, like it's not even malice or removing competition, they just do it from some fucked up instinct.
I own chickens and have had a bullying problem in the past. In the winter they have a lot less space and they get bored and stressed easily. The hen that took the "rooster"/protector role started pecking the smallest and sweetest chicken and drew blood. I had to keep the small chicken isolated from the flock for a few weeks while its wounds healed and put special goggles on the bully chicken for a month- they prevent it from seeing in front of itself so it forgets what's there after a few seconds. Yeah they can be vicious, but it's definitely preventable if they're raised right instead of at a factory farm.
Won't pigs gladly eat a whole person
I'm pretty sure i saw somewhere that mexican cartels would use pigs as a method to dispose bodys pretty grim
Italian mafia devised the method first. Will only leave the teeth, for some reason.
Read once an article where it was stated these "special purpose" pigs were kept hungry for a few days before a disposal, for faster results, and could even be used as a torture method, as the animals would attack any human figure on sight, dead or alive.
Now imagine slowly lowering a live human being into a pig pen full of these quasi feral animals, feet first.
Jesus that sounds agonising
Jesus
I once read about a turkey that had to be wraped in a tea towel to allow a wound to heal as the creature kept pecking at it and ripping out pieces of flesh that would glady eat.
That is pretty high on the extreme behavior list. And I think it was a pet turkey.
They call it cock fighting for a reason, and no this ain't no dick joke
Hate animal fights. The only animal fights I'll condone involve two homo sapiens trying to pour each others brains through their hear onto the ground, by means of punches and/or kicks to the head, at the sound of a bell.
You could save all of this cruelty by using egg substitutes and faux meats instead.
I could keep these little dinosaurs as pets, with no other objective or purpose besides admiring them because they are pretty to look at and that would not prevent any of the behaviors I listed.
What I'm about to say may evade you but cruelty is not an exclusive trait to human beings and chicken are a good example of it. They can be extremely cruel towards their own kind just for the sake of it. Not out of scarcity of food or living space. Just because they want to make another animal miserable.
they could care more about family ties.
ugh, the consequences of internet grammarian fascism: people using normative language to make a quirky riff on a nonsense "rule"
They're intelligent and very instinctive birds from birth- that doesn't mean that they're vicious though. My chickens that I'm raising are all sweethearts. It's all a matter of their environment. If you overcrowd them in an indoor factory farm of course they're going to turn on each other, they're extremely stressed out. Chickens that are raised outdoors with lots of space and different kinds of food are a lot less likely to act up and turn on each other. You can even taste a noticeable difference in eggs from happy chickens.
Roosters on the other hand are usually fucking assholes.
I had about a dozen chickens in an outdoors coop, with plenty of space (about 32 cubic metres of tridimensional space) and often carried them around in a chicken tractor (birds of prey area where I live) for grazing and some individuals exihibited extreme behaviors.
Again, variations will occur from breed to breed and from individual to individual.
Some breeds are especially known for being tamer than others and more concerned with eggs and brood than others.
I'll partially agree on your statement that all roosters are assholes: we had one that enjoyed crowing when we were trying to talk anywhere in the bird's line of sight.